Water seems to play a significant role in the Bible. It seems to be the barrier between where we are and where we need to be - like the Red Sea blocking the way between Egypt and Israel's pathway to the wilderness to worship the God of their fathers. We know this scene as leading up to the exodus. Or how about when Joshua leads the people from the wilderness to the bank of the Jordan River to cross over into the promised land? The Jordan offered up a daunting obstacle the people of Israel had to confront before entering Canaan. Water also seems to be the means by which our righteous God executes judgment on mankind. One particular event that comes to mind is the flood judgment, where God decided to deluge the entire world with water in the days of Noah. Another is the exodus event mentioned above, where God would judge the armies of Pharoah as they pursued the people of God through the Red Sea.
But another crucial aspect of what water does is that, while most of the examples mentioned above were real acts of judgment, it also offered a means by which God saved his people. This is the crux of our understanding of redemption - that is, namely, salvation through judgment. See what God says to Moses in Exodus 6:6, "I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment." God redeems with great acts of judgment. And Paul discusses this topic in his first letter to the Corinthian church. He says that, "our fathers were all under the cloud [of Christ's presence], and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). The people of Israel underwent a baptism as they passed through the Red Sea, but the same waters that were restrained on their behalf would be unleashed on the Egyptians in hot pursuit. They would all die as the waters came crashing down. Paul would later say that the cloud was actually Christ himself, in his preincarnate state. He led Israel through the waters. It was Christ that nourished them with bread (the manna pointed to the true spiritual food, the bread from heaven - John 6:48-51) and water from the Rock (1 Corinthians 10:4, John 6:55, the water pointed to the true spiritual drink, his own blood). And it was Christ they put to the test in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:9). Jude would go so far as to say that it was "Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt" (Jude 5, ESV). These verses touch both on Israel's identification with Christ as they were baptized in the Red Sea and their participation with Christ as they fed on the food and drink in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:16). Did you catch all that? This is tough to understand. Let's look at another example.
Peter also clarifies how this redemption through judgment works itself out - in 2 Peter 3:5-7, he says, "For they [false teachers] deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished." He says that God judged the world by means of a flood. But then in an earlier letter, he tells us about the redemption that came with that flood - in 1 Peter 3:20-21, "God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Incredible. Praise God for his mercy. So God judges the world with flood waters, but delivers eight people in an act that corresponds to baptism by means of an ark that was meant to symbolize the future resurrection of Jesus Christ. So Noah, as we see also with the people of Israel above, identifies himself mysteriously with Christ as he passed through the judgment waters. It is in this identification that we find our deliverance from the wrath of God. And Peter says that this water is not about cleansing (i.e. removing of dirt from the body), but is more accurately meant to provide the means by which we make an appeal to God for a good conscience. (On an important note, how does baptism offer us a good conscience? Because Christ died and has been raised, never to die again. As those who have sinned against God, we make our appeal to him on the grounds of this miraculous act of grace - on the grounds of Jesus' blood, we plead our case. And it is on these grounds of appeal that our consciences are made right with our Father.)
Our baptism is intricately intertwined with these Old Testament events. First, Christ himself mentions his future suffering on our behalf as a baptism. In the gospel account of Luke, he says, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!" (Luke 12:50). The suffering was not his being rejected by men at the cross, but the judgment of God that occurred on the cross. His baptism was experiencing the wrath of a holy God against the sins of the world. In Romans 6, Paul addresses our identification with this baptism into death. He says, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by 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" (Romans 6:3-4). Again, Paul says that in order for us to be raised up out of those judgment waters of death, we must identify ourselves with Christ. Just as Noah identified with the future resurrection of Christ as he passed through the waters safely, how much more shall we pass through the baptismal waters and be raised as we identify ourselves with him who has already been raised by the glory of the Father!
The impetus of my argument here is twofold - first, the day of the Lord is coming, and his judgment is close behind. But second, if we identify ourselves with Christ by confessing that he is Lord and believing that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9), we too will pass through the waters safely. We too will be saved through God's judgment.
SDG
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