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Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

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A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

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Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Theology - Liturgical: Baptismal exhortation

1 Corinthians 6:9-11: Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? . . . Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.

The washing rites of the Old Covenant that Jesus talks about in the sermon text were effective.  A man who had a seminal emission had to wash himself and afterward he would be clean by the evening sacrifice.  A chair where a menstruating woman had sat became unclean, but anyone who sat in it had only to wash and he was cleansed and could return to the sanctuary of God.  Washings were effective; they effected a transition from one state to another, from uncleanness to cleanliness, from defilement to purity.

But any Jew who practiced these rites of washing thoughtfully had to recognize that they were finally ineffective.  Hebrews says that the fact that the sacrifices have to be repeated, the fact that there is a Day of Atonement every year, was a sign that the blood of bulls and goats was not taking away sin, not finally.  So too, the fact that Jews had to wash, and wash, and wash again meant that they had not received the final, ultimate cleansing.  Repeating the rites of washing was a continuing sign that they had not yet arrived, that they were still looking for a bath that would end all bathing.

Christians, oddly, often think that the Christian bath is less effective than the bathings of the law.  While the washings of the law cleansed from defilements, and really effected a change of state, the washing of the new covenant doesn’t actually do anything.  It is a symbol of something else, but doesn’t do anything.

Paul doesn’t see things that way.  In a passage full of temple imagery, Paul speaks of a washing that marks and effects a transition from being unrighteous to being justified in the name of Jesus and in the Spirit. 

Some of the Corinthians, he says, were unrighteous adulterers, thieves, idolators, drunkards, revilers.  But then they were washed, and this washing meant that they were no longer what they had been: “Such were some of you.”  But now, having been washed in the name of Jesus, they have been liberated from defilements.  They were one thing; they are no longer, because they have been washed, justified, sanctified in the name of Jesus.

Baptism, the Christian bath, is not less effective than the baths of the Old Covenant; it is more effective.  It doesn’t just remove dirt from the flesh, but is a testimony of a good conscience before God through the resurrection of Jesus.  It doesn’t have to be repeated; it happens once.

This is what’s happening to Richard today, and it shows how you are to regard him.  Through this washing, he is being cleansed of impurity by the power of the resurrection.  Through this washing, he is being detached from the unrighteous and made a holy child of God, claimed as God’s own property, God’s temple.  Through this washing, he is cleansed so that he can enter the sanctuary of God and eat at His table.

Regard him as a clean one, a pure one, a holy child.  Teach him that he is cleansed, and teach him to remember again and again the cleansing he’s received.  Teach him that because he has been cleansed, he must constantly seek fresh cleansing by confessing his sins.  Teach him that having been cleansed he must resolutely resist the temptation to return to the miasma of the world, because if he does, his last state is worse than the first.

Teach him the glory of the new covenant.  Teach him that he has not received a bath like Israel, one that must be repeated.  He has been bathed with Christian baptism, the bath that is as once-for-all as the death and resurrection of Jesus to which it unites him.