Baptism and Marriage. Part Six.

The Concept. 

The concept of Baptism is quite strange. We make a lifetime commitment to the divine Creator and invite him into our heart so he can dwell there. We ask him to be a very part of our being, our thoughts and actions. We ask him to walk with us through life’s biggest challenges and fears, and then finally through the dark vale of death itself. 

That sounds like a deal no one would refuse. But many of us do. One reason is we would not feel comfortable having God with us when we visit certain places or do certain things.

Another reason can be that we have the wrong idea of God, we envision him as non-personal and aloof. We think that after our death God will examine our lives and makes a judgement on whether we deserve heaven or hell. Almost as if the sole requirement of our getting to heaven is having our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds.

I don’t believe God works that way. I think we can look at the concept of marriage here to illustrate the point. When we marry our spouse we may think we know each other, but in all reality we know very little. We make a huge leap of faith that we will live happily ever after. We think our whirlwind love will always be there in it’s burning intensity, but we find something different, something much deeper and substantial. We find a love that delights in giving, rather than taking, and one that flourishes in times of sickness, hurt and need, instead of only anticipated happy times.

The way we find this love is we let go of old ingrained selfish habits and cultivate new caring ones, ones that consider the needs and feelings of our loved one. Once we start bettering and are conscious of our love and commitment deepening, we try harder. As we do this, our relationship comes ever closer and closer to what God had originally intended for marriage: two people becoming one flesh

This kind of love is obviously not present at the time of marriage. This is a love that has been tested and purified by the refining ovens of life. A love that comes out of the remains of its first fiery burst, and then slowly but surely turns into the love of understanding and appreciating of our life’s partner. 

The same holds true for baptism. We know very little about God till we start a relationship with him. As He reveals himself more and more we begin to understand his love. This causes us to love him more, causing him to reveal himself more. It’s an ever deepening cycle of trust and love and understanding. God accepts us fully when we enter a relationship with him, and the judgmental image that we have of God as we were growing up turns into a image of Love, a God that only has our best interests in mind. 

To sum things up, we don’t live out our life with the one we love and then at the end decide if we are worthy and then propose marriage. That would make no sense at all. It works this way, we take the leap of faith, marry, and then gradually mold into one flesh.

The same concept applies to Baptism. When we get baptized and accept Jesus as our personal saviour our name is entered into the Book of Life.  Then, as we learn more about Jesus and His love for us, our understanding and love for Him grows. 

But here’s the disclaimer. Baptism without faithfulness, through hardheartedness, totally voids the contract. Not that this is God’s will, but ours.

P.S. When I started this blog on Baptism and Marriage I had no idea that it would go beyond the first instalment. As I started writing and thinking the similarities became so obvious that each begged the next post. To help us understand the concept of Baptism it helps to look at the institution of Marriage. The clues and practical experiences are all there. 

Thank you for being on this journey with me.

Louie Vetter

Baptism and Marriage. Part Five.

Forgiveness.

In marriage, if one partner strays and worships false gods, or in the language of marriage, worships someone or something other than the wedding partner, great harm and complete loss of trust occurs. 

Both marriage partners need to sit down and evaluate where this is going. Is there a use continuing this commitment? Will there be forgiveness, even if the offending partner is truly remorseful that the offence took place? 

God suggests there is. In fact, in the story of Hosea he commands his prophet to marry a prostitute. To take her home and marry her. To clean her up and clothe her. To marry on trust, and if the trust is broken, to start all over again. That would be so hard for us to do, but such is the love of God. He will beg and plead and do everything in his power to make us love Him. If only we will set aside our idols and objects of worship and come and follow Him, He will wash us and make us pure again and white as the falling snow.

But His love also respects us. If we stiffneckedly refuse Him and continue walking the path of our own choosing and worship the objects we desire, He will let us. He loves us too much to put us into bondage in order to prevent us from carrying out our ways.

And in marriage we can relate. We can love our partner with the deepest love possible, but if our spouse were to stray, there is nothing we can do except to unconditionally forgive, and then beg and plead and hope that our love would repent and return to its first love. And if reconciliation is not to be, we have to respect that wish as well.

Baptism and Marriage, Part Four.

Faithfulness. 

Human nature is so that the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence.

 Imagine this scenario, we get married but still harbour memories from previous acquaintances or new people we meet. Or even worse, if we’d have pictures or gifts from these acquaintances on display on the walls or placed around our home. 

Now imagine if one were to go and pursue these lusts to their logical end with an adulterous act. The hurt and harm that would inflict on a marriage would be so immense that it would take severe repentance and authentic remorse to even begin to build the former trust. 

The wrongdoing of this straying or drifting is so starkly clear and obvious in marriage, and is no less important in our baptism, even though we tend to think God is so loving and understanding that will overlook spiritual adultery. Remember, Jesus said that even looking at a woman lustfully is already committing adultery in our heart. 

With these scenarios we can clearly see and feel the significance of the first two commandments.

The first, “You shall have no other Gods before me.”

And the second, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness..., You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.

Baptism and Marriage. Part Three.

I think we can all agree that marriage and the marriage vows are sacred and holy, and carry a commitment to love, cherish, and obey one another.

When we think of sacredness and holiness we often think of a church or temple. 

Think of how we conduct ourself when we enter into one of those buildings. We speak in a softer tone of voice, we won’t speak certain words or talk of certain topics. We act in a more respectable and responsible way than we normally would. We are kinder, gentler and more considerate to the people around us. Now imagine if our body is a temple to the living God, and guess what, it is! Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? 

Well, if we think of this way, that changes things a little bit. And so it should. For if we don’t treat our body as a temple, chances are that the Holy Spirit won’t like the atmosphere we produce and very predictably, will move out. And without the presence of the Holy Spirit influencing us, our temple will turn into a house of shame rather quickly and our baptism is desacralized.

 As with baptism so with marriage, when we treat our vows with anything less than sacredness, we may soon start to find ourself estranged from the one we promised to love, cherish and obey.

Baptism and Marriage. Part Two.

Here are some more thoughts on the similarities between baptism and marriage.

We cannot get married to our loved one by ourselves, we need an ordained representative to create the bond, almost as a free gift with no work on our part, except to say I do. 

And the same goes with baptism, we cannot get baptized by ourselves, we need an ordained representative. 

Once committed to God we receive the Holy Spirit that comes to live in our bodily house, and then we are in a very real sense in a marriage with the Third Person of the Trinity or in other words with God himself. 

We can see here that this bond is also a free gift with no work on our part, except to affirm. But that bond doesn’t assure us salvation. Because just as in marriage, we have some work to do. Let me illustrate.

In marriage, as soon as the bond is set, work begins. Though in all fairness it’s not really work as much as it is a working out of your love towards your partner. Labour of love, if you will. Not that we have to do it but we want to do it. To not do it would be to deny or quell our love, and effectively our marriage commitment to our partner. That would be marriage in name only, which throws up the question where our heart lies. “For where your treasure lies, your heart lies also.” Matthew 6:21

So it is in our baptism, except it’s not us working but a letting of the Spirit work in us.

‘Do not quench the Spirit,’ writes Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. 

The Spirit will then naturally produce fruit.  “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.” Galatians 5:22

Again, these fruits are the natural out-workings of the unquenched Spirit. “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5