How am I to properly be comforted as one who was not baptized as a child but recieved the Lord as an adult without looking at the “experience” I had when I first believed?

For the life of me I cannot see how you reconcile justification by faith and then add or include justification by water baptism. Which is it?

Thanks for you help. I do appreciate you. But I can’t figure out Lutheran theology to save my soul!! Crownman52@aol.com

Yes, it does sound like Lutherans deny justification by faith when we speak of water baptism. The reason for that is because water baptism is regarded as a work of man because it is man who uses the water and it is man who says the words. However, we regard water baptism in the same way as we regard the words of Ezekiel when God told him to speak to the dead and dry bones. Though Ezekiel said the words, there is no doubt from the 37th chapter that the power behind the words was none other than God Himself. Ezekiel had no power to put flesh and sinews on dead bones let alone place breath into them as they became living human beings.

So also, no person of his own ability is able to create faith in anyone. However, God uses people to speak the words He commands so that not only faith but also new life is given to unbelievers. As Romans 10 reveals that faith comes about by hearing the Word of God. In no way does our words about the Gospel contradict the notion that a person is saved by grace through faith. God simply uses the words He has given us to say and does the work He has promised to do. It is not just Ezekiel who was astounded by what his words achieved; it is also every Christian pastor who applies water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who is also astounded as to how God uses sinners to accomplish His word of justifying His enemies.

In response to Toby who asks about how one can be comforted if not baptized as a child, keep in mind when comfort is needed. If you are a Christian who is satisfied that his faith is sufficient to assure him of being saved, then the following won’t be necessary. But if you are a Christian who at times questions your salvation in light of your sinful life and/or weak faith, then baptism is so helpful.

Imagine a 14-year old child discovers that he is not begotten but adopted. He can’t believe it. The only way he will be assured is by showing him the adoption papers. In a similar way, I cannot trust myself to be sure of my salvation on the basis of my faith, as weak as it often gets. Thus, the LORD in His wisdom saw fit to assure us of our salvation by attaching a promise to a holy action that he does. That action is water baptism which Peter reveals in Acts 2 provides the two gifts of the assurance of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Now for me to deny that I will be saved, is to call God a liar. For he has adopted me and assured me of that adoption through the holy and sacred (thus, sacramental) rite of water baptism. Just as he saved those individuals in the days of Noah, so also water baptism is another type of how He saved me. Bless the LORD indeed!

If I may offer my own experience moving from my former denomination to the present and the struggles I had (have). Just to kind of understand my general “journey” if you will post conversion. I began my journey within the pale of the faith when I was baptized in a SB church, the only Christian thing I kind of knew after my conversion at 32. I didn’t convert at a SB church or preaching but that was the only denomination I loosely knew from my family, so there is where I went to be baptized. My actual conversion came dramatically with a strong and clear placarding of Christ by some preacher on the radio. I’ll never forget that day: one minute an atheist/agnostic the next I saw. I knew I must be baptized, but then the struggles post baptism came.

My journey in the faith to date has been from Atheist to Southern Baptist to Calvinistic/Reformed S. Baptist to presently Reformed PCA. Personally I’m a mixture between Reformed and Lutheran leaning heavily Lutheran because quite frankly Lutheran’s preserve the Gospel the best and purest and Luther’s writings have been a balm to my soul. Even on the sacraments I’m torn between these two camps. The one thing I’ve found similar in Lutheran theology and the better Reformed camp is the preservation of the pure Gospel in Word and Sacrament. Concerning the sacraments both camps see them as primarily Gospel as opposed to the baptistic camps in which these things are either explicitly or implicitly Law signs. When I first gleaned that difference a few years back I knew I would never could stay in that denomination because the Gospel witness is lost in there “ordinances”. Luther was the most right on this issue when he said that if we only baptize professing adults, at length, the Gospel witness would be lost altogether in baptism. Prophetically he was right and that’s exactly what we have in many denominations of that cut.

Rev. Baker hit the nail on the head again. These verses are one of those that until even now use to both perplex me and terrify me. Ever since I became a Christian that passage about the witness of the Spirit with ours made me wonder “am I saved”. Because I could never figure out what it meant nor receive much help short of a “mystical type” or some deeply inward answer. My former denomination (SB) this verse is a deeply inward turning verse from which no comfort is derived but rather more terror. Because as a Baptist on thing is for sure, you never trust IN your baptism! Rather one has to scrap your conscience raw for that “one thing”, that no one seems to be able to materialize or name, that will give you assurance that you are “saved” or “regenerate”. The only problem is for persons like myself who examine the nth degree of my inward self, is that I could never find anything definitive or “clean enough”. Even worse, the deeper I dug the worse the evidence became. It was always, for me, kind of like what Shakespeare said; the bloody evidence couldn’t be cleaned away and all I could see within myself was more and more stain. All I could cry in that torment of inward searching and anguish of greater my sin the deeper within myself was, “Out damn spot out!” To no avail. When all I needed to do was trust in the blood of Christ which is IN my baptism that cleansed me. But a “good” Baptist will never draw the sword of the Word of baptism against Satan’s accusations and say, “No Satan I AM baptized.” Rather in the Baptist version of baptism, when faith is assaulted by the devil, the devil grabs that sword of baptism and uses it against you. In short the Lutheran tradition sees baptism based and coming “into existence”, if you will, on the Gospel ITSELF. In baptistic type of traditions baptism is based upon faith or some sign of faith. Hence, when the devil seeks to make you doubt by throwing your worthless works, sin and weak faith in your face you cannot pull baptism out on him because it is based on those very things. So, one ends up stuck, naked and unarmed to battle the foe with the weapon God gave us, namely baptism (the Lord’s Supper carries a similar problem in that tradition as well).

I must confess when I first read Dr. Baker’s explanation my old baptistic theology of glory came out and I said to myself, “That can’t be it – it’s to simple”. Then it hit me. That’s EXACTLY what a theologian of glory would say and think (hence your opening points). It indeed requires not manmade faith but cross begotten miraculous faith to trust even in baptism as God’s baptism and help for our weakness. Theologies of glory look for some form of material inward “re-pentecost”. Theologies of glory must measure things by some form of “sight” and will never believe or understand in something as simple as Baptism being God’s and not mine or the pastor’s. But a theology of cross is broken and desperate and knows God works through what He said He would!

The BIG difference for me in moving from my former denominational tradition to where I am now was especially the Gospel witness captured in the Sacraments, Gospel instead of Law. It was an eye opening, faith growing thing for me and my wife to discover that baptism was not our own, we didn’t do it, the pastor didn’t do it to us or later to our children, but GOD did it. Through sovereign providence God moved us to receive His gift of baptism which by the Word contains the Gospel and is GIVEN to us, not procured by our efforts. Even if on our end it appears as if we “DO” it.

In Christ,

Larry Hughes
KY