Truth For Life

Bob Lepine: Today on Truth For Life, we continue our study in the book of Ephesians where the apostle Paul is highlighting the importance of one baptism. Is he referring to the way believers get baptized or something different? Alistair Begg helps us understand. He's teaching from the book of Ephesians, chapter four.

Alistair Begg: Verse four of Ephesians 4, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." In this present study, we are considering just these two words: one baptism.

The English Puritan John Owen, who lived in the early part of the 17th century, was born in 1616. He wrote that in a sense there are only two basic issues with which the minister of the gospel has to deal. He says the two basic issues that the gospel minister has to tackle are what he refers to as number one, the evangelistic challenge. The evangelistic challenge, namely persuading those who are under the dominion of sin that that is the truth about them.

Secondly, the pastoral challenge. The pastoral challenge: persuading those who are no longer under sin's dominion that this is who they really are. Paul has been doing this all the way from the beginning of this letter. He's been saying to the folks in Ephesus, it is of vital importance that you understand that you are in Christ, in Christ.

This is Paul's great phraseology because he's saying again and again that the essence of being a Christian is in being united to Christ by faith. So, for example, in verse 13 of chapter one, referring to this, he says, "In him, that is in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit."

In that opening section of his letter, which we referred to as a great symphony of praise, he has been praising God for the wonder of His goodness in the lives of those to whom he wrote. Because he realizes that they have been blessed, once again, in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

This, he says, is what is true of you. This is who you are. This is your birthright in Jesus. You need to know who you are. What I want to say to you this morning is if you're a believer, do you know who you are? Do you know who you are? You see, the problem with that individual was narcissism. It was a self-image problem.

When narcissism and self-interest is represented in a Christian community, then it divides. People have forgotten or they don't know who they are. Previously, they thought that their identity was in their intellectual achievement, or their identity was in their financial acumen, or their identity was in their ethnicity or whatever else it was.

But now they discover, no, that's not it. These things are not irrelevant. But the most significant thing about me is that I am a woman in Christ. I have been placed into Christ. I have been united with Christ. I am no longer what I once was. That is exactly what Paul is doing here in Ephesians and as he underscores these things for these folks.

You say to me this morning, well, I don't feel like it. Martin Lloyd-Jones responds, whether you feel like it or not, if you are in Christ, this is the truth concerning you. Do you feel American this morning? Well, whether you feel American or not, the majority of you are American. You are. It's who you are. It's your identity, at least in terms of culture and nationality.

Now, why are we going to tackle this in this way? Well, because the reality of who we are in Christ is a shared reality. The same grace that has united us with Christ, brought us into union with Christ, has brought us into communion with one another. That picture of our engagement with one another, of our unity in the Lord Jesus Christ, is the focus of Paul at the beginning of chapter four.

He wants to make sure that those to whom he writes are now, as he says, eager to maintain this unity with all humility and with gentleness and with forbearance to one another. Because, he says, this is the kind of unity that is found in the physical body. The physical body is an organic and a vital unity.

The little finger is not allowed to say, "I do not like thumbs, so I don't want to be part of the thing. I don't really consider myself part of it." Well, guess what? You are part of it. The same is true of us in Christ. That has something to say again about our gathering together and so on, but I think you've had more than enough on that for this morning.

Notice that this is part and parcel of the foundation of unity in Christ. There is one Lord, there is one Spirit, there is one body, there is one hope, there is one faith—both a faith that we proclaim and a faith that we embrace, objectively and subjectively as we saw last time—and there is one baptism.

That baptism is an indication again of who we are in Christ. So, let's just try and do this. Let me try and say something about how we need to be clear concerning what Paul is saying here when he says one baptism. When you read this, it may strike you immediately as ironic that he would include baptism as a basis for unity.

Historically, baptism has proved to be an occasion of disagreement even amongst people who are good friends with one another and embrace the same truths concerning the gospel. I think it's also safe to say that the initial readers of Ephesians, when they had this letter read out to them, none of them would have been caught up in these divisive debates.

There's no reason—I mean, maybe they were, but I do not think they were. They would have understood exactly what was happening when a person was baptized. They had once been going in one direction, they'd encountered Jesus as had Paul on the Damascus Road, they had understood what it means to submit to His Lordship, and their profession of faith was then galvanized and exemplified in their baptism.

They would not have been sitting around saying, "I wonder what he means by one baptism" in the way that we're tempted to do. It may be that he is simply referring to the fact that they have not only believed the same truth and submitted to the same Lord, but that they have displayed the same sign, namely in their baptism.

Or perhaps we could say that he's acknowledging that they have received the same sign, that they have been marked in the same way. Turn, if you would, to Romans chapter six and let's try and advance the thought. In Romans chapter six, he begins with some people who apparently want to know: Can we continue in sin so that grace may abound?

If all of our sins have been forgiven past, present, and future, if we can never advance our cause before God from where we are in Christ, then surely there's a legitimate possibility that we could just go out and sin like crazy then and prove how forgiving God actually is. What is Paul's answer to that? "God forbid," he says. "By no means. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means."

Then he asks the question, "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" If we've been removed from the realm of sin, the dominion of sin in Christ, how can we then still live in the realm from which we have been removed? It's a contradiction. You can't be both in Christ and in Adam simultaneously.

By nature, we are in Adam as children of Adam, sharing in all of the fallenness and the sin and our isolation from God. By grace, we are placed in Christ into a whole new domain of life and forgiveness and fellowship and joy. Paul says, are you actually asking the question? How can somebody who has died to sin still live in it?

You can't live in two houses at the one time. You were born and brought up in this one. You have been moved to this one. The thing that you need to know, he says, is that you are now in Christ. The essence of your Christian experience is your union with Christ. You are united with Christ. This is the fact, you see.

Then again someone says, well, I don't feel it. It doesn't matter right now whether you feel it. We have been, look, he says—he uses the same picture—"Don't you know, of course you do, that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?" We were therefore buried with him in 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. A radical transformation has taken place. Again notice that the verb is in the passive, not in the active. It's not something we do ourselves because it doesn't primarily signify something that we ourselves have done.

Paul when he writes at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, he says, "I'm thankful that I didn't baptize any of you. Were you baptized in this guy's name or that guy's name or this fellow's name? No, you weren't. There was only one name in which you were baptized, and that is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ himself."

You've been given a new name. In the same way that my name is Begg and yours may be Jones or McKinnon or whatever else it is, when someone says your name, it identifies you. If someone says, "Alistair Begg," there shouldn't be 15 people get up here and run out. I mean, I might run away, but not run in answer to the name. It's my name.

I have been baptized into the name of Jesus. I'm no longer just Alistair Begg, full stop. I am Alistair Begg in Christ. That's my identity. Not my ethnicity, not my intelligence, not my stature or my absence of stature. It isn't yours either, if you're in Jesus. Some of you are wrestling all the time with your self-image and who I am and where I am and how I fit in the next thing.

Loved ones, here is the pastoral challenge: that those who are in Christ may know who they really are. Do you know this morning who you are? You see, baptism doesn't symbolize so much what we have done as it symbolizes what has been done for us. People come and they see the baptism and say, well, what the world happened to her? What is that about?

Well, it's about who Jesus is. That's why if somebody is prepared to ask the question, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Paul is saying it's obvious that they don't understand what it means to be in Christ. Or if you like, they don't understand the nature of baptism. They don't understand that they have been united to Christ, that they have died to sin.

What does that mean? It means that I'm no longer under its dominion. I'm no longer under its dominion. Previously, I was a slave to sin. That's Ephesians chapter two. I was enslaved to sin. It wasn't a choice. I thought wrongly about God. There was no part of my life that was not impregnated with the reality of my rebellion against God, my disinterest in Him. That was just my state.

But it's not my state any longer. Why? Because I, because He, because of who He is. He died, I died with Him. He was raised, I was raised with Him. He will live forever, I will live forever. It is ontologically impossible for me not to live forever. Why? Because I am in Christ.

Let me just say a further word concerning then how this clarifies our identity in Christ. I'll give you just the cliff notes. What is Paul actually saying here? Well, if you look down at verse six—this is where we're still in Romans 6—for we know that our old self, our old self or our old man—self is good because it means who we were in Adam—we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Okay, now just take that for what it says. Paul's argument in chapter five is the wonder of what has happened. In Christ, we have been set free from all of the bondage that was ours where death reigned in Adam. You need to look at this for yourself. For example, verse 19 of chapter five: "For as by the one man's disobedience, namely Adam, the many were made sinners," our state before God, "so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous."

We were by nature under the dominion of sin and death, but now by grace we are in the domain of Christ and the domain of life. Again if you go back to Ephesians 2, where Paul is reminding these folks of what they were: "You were dead in your trespasses. You lived in this way. You were by nature children of wrath, you were like the rest of mankind."

Somebody says, no I wasn't. I was a really nice person. I mean, I can see how some of these Ephesians must have been like that, but I wasn't like that. Now we're back at the challenge number one. What was the first challenge? The evangelistic challenge: to convince those who are outside of Christ that their real dilemma is that they are under the dominion of sin. That's what we do.

He says to them, you know now that that's what you were, really nice, well-respected Shaker Valley people who hadn't a clue that the real predicament was that they were dead in their trespasses and in their sins. That there was nothing they could do to put themselves before God in an acceptable fashion until they understood that there is no need of a Savior.

Jesus Christ then is just somebody you add to your program, a little thing that you add to your life, a little spiritual experience. That is not Christianity. That is not what Paul is talking about. Paul is talking about this immense reality. You once were this, but you are no longer this. Why? Because I have been baptized into union with Christ.

This is something that He has done. This is a mystery. In Christ I am someone who is delivered from the dominion of sin and transferred into the kingdom of God. The final word is this: that it is out of that identity that our activity flows. He says all of this so that you might walk in newness of life. Then at the end of chapter six he has a run of imperatives. You can find them on your own.

He says, and so I want to make sure that you're doing this and you're doing this and you're doing this. Well, you see, unless the imperatives are grounded in the indicatives, then the imperatives just sound so burdensome, and they are. How am I going to do this? I would need to be a new person to do this. In Christ, you are a new person. I don't feel like it. Don't worry about that at the moment.

This is your name. Live up to your name. Are you really going to say, "Shall I continue in sin so that I may prove what a wonderful Savior Jesus is?" God forbid! That's incongruent. You are somebody totally new. Now live in the light of your newness. You see, loved ones, if you get this the wrong way around, then the story of the gospel is completely reversed. It is no gospel at all. That is that by my activity I may then create my identity. No. It is out of my identity that my activity emerges.

Well, you say this is not easy. No, it's not easy. But you need to get up in the morning—I need to get up in the morning and say to myself, look in the mirror, if you can stand it, and say, you know what, I'm no longer enslaved to sin. Why? Because I'm in Christ. Yeah, but I had a horrible day yesterday. I shouted at somebody, I was disobedient, I had poor thoughts, bad thoughts, ugly thoughts, dirty thoughts.

But I'm no longer enslaved to sin. I don't live under its dominion. I don't have to. I still deal with its temptations. I'm still involved in a continual and irreconcilable war. But I am a man in Christ. And it is because of this, because of this new identity, that I may then proceed to this activity.

And loved ones, here—and with this I stop—the principal means whereby God by His Spirit achieves this move, if you like, from justification, where we are the beneficiaries of the imputed righteousness of Christ by faith, to sanctification, where by our obedience and following we work out our own salvation. The primary means that God the Holy Spirit uses to achieve this is the Word of God.

The Word of God. And it is our spiritual map, food, guide. That is why I said what I said to you about the preaching of the Word of God. Not to secure our pastoral team's longevity, but because I love you. And in the way that my mother loved me and said, "Hey, quit pushing that stuff to the side of the plate. Eat that stuff. I want you to grow up to be a strong boy."

"I don't like that." "I don't care if you like it. Eat it! You may grow to like it." "What if I don't?" "Eat it!" You say that didn't sound very nice. Listen, it is by the truth of God's Word brought home by the Holy Spirit that you and I and we will grow and flourish. It is the absence of the impact of the truth of God's Word in our lives, individually and communally, that will lead to stagnation and eventual sterility.

A church that will not commit itself to the teaching and preaching of the Bible, both done and received, is destined to live forever in the nursery, in the sense that the writer to the Hebrews says, "I couldn't address you as mature people. I couldn't give you solid food. I had to just keep giving you the same stuff all over again." Why? Because your spiritual stomach has shrunk.

May God make sure that that doesn't happen to us. And the way to deal with it is each of us one person at a time, going back to the Bible and saying, "This is who I am and therefore, this is how I will live."

Bob Lepine: You're listening to Truth For Life. That was Alistair Begg urging us to remember who we are in Christ and then to live accordingly. Unfortunately, it's not that uncommon for professing Christians today to be swayed by errant doctrine or irreverent worship, even to unknowingly lure others away from the true biblical faith.

Today we are recommending a book that addresses that problem. It brings us back to the basics. The book is called *A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation*. This book examines the spiritual practices modeled by the 16th and 17th century Reformers and the Puritans. It unpacks the importance of key spiritual disciplines like prayer, reading the Scriptures, worshipping together, and the direct relationship these disciplines have on our spiritual growth and renewal.

Ask for your copy of the book *A Heart Aflame for God* when you donate to support the Bible teaching ministry of Truth For Life today. You can give a gift online at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for studying the Bible with us today. Do you call God Father? Not everyone can, and tomorrow we'll consider what it means to know the Lord in this way.

The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.