Almost every weekend someone visits Wooddale for the first time. A few years ago one of those guests happened to come on a baptism Sunday. Afterward they said they loved the music and found the message interesting, but they had one question: why were we dunking people under the water?
It’s a fair question, and people have been asking it since the earliest days of the church. That’s why we’re starting What’s in the Water?, a series on baptism. As Kyle Robinson explains in this first message, understanding baptism starts with understanding the gospel.
Kyle makes two things clear up front:
So if baptism pictures what it means to be saved, the real question is how we’re saved. Before we can answer that, we need to know why we need saving at all. The good news makes sense only after the bad news.
In Ephesians 2:1-5, the Apostle Paul is writing to people who already follow Jesus, and he reminds them where they started. Kyle names three conditions.
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:1-5
Paul isn’t talking about physical death. He means spiritual death. Kyle compares it to his Garmin running watch dying halfway through a run. He can press every button and tap the screen, and it still won’t respond. People who are spiritually dead are like that with the things of God. They don’t respond to Him, and they drift through life.
What if you think of yourself as spiritual but not religious? Kyle says everyone is spiritual. The real question is whether you’re spiritually alive or spiritually dead. If you’re alive, when was your spiritual birthday, and who gave you that life? Nobody gives birth to themselves, and a dead watch doesn’t recharge on its own. Someone has to plug it into a power source.
Paul pulls back the curtain on a spiritual realm where evil forces want to control us. Their main tool is sin, and sin rarely announces itself. It starts as one subtle step in the wrong direction, then another, until you’re far from where you meant to be.
Kyle knows what it’s like to be deceived. Years ago he landed at LaGuardia, head down in emails on his BlackBerry, and followed a man who offered him a cab. He ended up in an unmarked minivan in a parking lot. The “driver” demanded that Kyle read his credit card number to someone over the phone. Only after Kyle said he would call the police did the man turn around and drop him off near the airport. Kyle didn’t go to New York to get scammed. He just wasn’t paying attention.
None of us set out to be deceived either. We were just trying to get through life. Accepting Jesus means getting out of the van, and some people are still in it without knowing.
Paul says we were “by nature deserving of wrath.” God’s wrath isn’t an out-of-control outburst. It’s His passionate opposition to sin, because sin destroys the people He loves. Any parent who has driven a newborn home from the hospital, glaring at every other driver on the road, knows a little of that protective anger. As Kyle puts it, God isn’t mad at you. He’s mad for you.
The hardest part is that we often don’t realize any of this. Paul says we “used to live” this way, and the phrase pictures the way we walked through life. Kyle’s running coach once asked him about his cadence, something Kyle had never thought about. It was low enough to cause injuries, and changing it took a year and a half. We get so used to walking a certain way that we don’t notice it’s hurting us.
Then Paul writes two words that change everything: “But God.” Because of His great love and rich mercy, God made us alive with Christ even when we were dead. “It is by grace you have been saved.”
Mercy and grace aren’t the same thing. Mercy is getting pulled over for speeding and not getting the ticket you deserve. Jesus took the punishment for our sin on the cross, so we don’t have to face its eternal consequences. Grace is God giving us something we could never earn, which is new spiritual life. Instead of being dead, deceived and doomed, we’re alive in Christ, aware of spiritual things and holding a promise of eternal hope.
We aren’t saved by baptism or good works, and we don’t earn or deserve it. We’re saved by God’s grace alone, and we receive it by accepting it.
That’s what baptism celebrates. When someone goes under the water, they identify with Jesus’ death on their behalf and declare that their old life is buried. Next week Kyle will talk about why we come back up.
Paul lived all of this himself. Before he met Jesus, he hunted down Christians to have them arrested and killed. After he met Jesus, he received new life, wrote many of the letters in the New Testament and was baptized right away.
If you follow Jesus, let what you’ve been saved from lead you to gratitude and worship. If you’ve accepted Jesus but haven’t been baptized yet, consider taking that step to say publicly what’s true.
If you haven’t said yes to Jesus, you can’t earn God’s grace, and you don’t have to. You simply accept it. Kyle closes the message with a prayer you can pray too: admitting your sin, believing Jesus died to take its punishment and accepting God’s free gift of new life.
Watch the full message above, download the Life Group questions to talk it through with others or learn more about baptism at Wooddale.
