We do not reenact Jesus’ death, burial or resurrection. We, on an individual level, simply trust in, confess and rehearse it. We rehearse it in water baptism. We rehearse it in the Lord’s Supper. We rehearse it in the preaching of the Gospel every week. We rehearse it in worship by exalting the work of Christ rather than focusing on our own actions or experiences. We rehearse it in living lives dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ. In repentance we turn from what we could not do, to accept and claim what God has done for us. Water baptism is not an application of the death of Jesus but a recital that shows forth the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord. It was done for us two thousand years ago. We cannot distort or pervert holy baptism by making it a way to qualify people for salvation. Water baptism is the telling of the Gospel of Jesus in visual, tangible language, not the means of obtaining salvation. Our salvation was obtained by Jesus on that Cross long ago.
The means of salvation is humble faith IN Christ, not obedience TO baptism. We do not baptize out of fear of falling short of salvation. We baptize, not to recreate or reenact Christ’s work, but to symbolically show what He has done. Christians go wrong when they turn from reciting the Gospel to reenacting the Gospel through baptism. This is where “salvation is not said to be by God’s act outside us in Christ, but by its reenactment in us.” We are commanded to baptize because, it shows that we fell far short by our sin, but Jesus saves us to the uttermost through his freely taking away our sins on the Cross. He ever lives to make intercession for us!
Receiving the Holy Spirit is not something that we do to get saved. It is a gift, given to those who trust in the finished work of Christ alone. Instead of laboring in prayer at an altar for days and weeks trying to “get the Holy Ghost” so that one can know they are saved, the Bible teaches that we are given the Holy Spirit when we trust in Christ. We “get” the Spirit when we “get” Christ (
Ephesians 1:13). How could it be otherwise? It is impossible to have Christ and still be missing something essential to our salvation. The “fulness” is in Christ.
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